About Me

Introductions

Dad Joke

• Why did the nearsighted man fall in the well?

• He couldn’t see that well!

Programming provides exciting opportunities for social scientists

• Digital data is exploding and programming is required to do research at scale
• Algorithms mediate more and more interactions and understanding programming can help us to analyze them
• Computational methods let us do new things
  • NLP
  • Simulation
  • Large-scale experiments
• There is value in “thinking like a computer”

Goals

• Learn basic programming
• Be able to collect and visualize data from the web
• Present computational research
• Read and evaluate computational social science research

This is an intense “bootcamp” intended to teach the basics of skills used by computational social scientists

• It’s going to be intense! :)
• But we can do it!
• Week 1: Python for Everybody
• Week 2: Pandas, visualizations, and APIs
• Week 3: Data cleaning, version control, etc.
• Week 4: Work on final project

Day-to-day

• Example paper
  • One person will present each day + lead discussion
  • Others will skim
• Lecture
  • Recorded lecture on coding topic
  • Notebook to follow along - download and run each day
  • Class time focused on counfusions + Coding Challenges
• Coding Challenges
  • Random “cold calling” for reviewing solutions
  • 5-10 minutes in small groups to prepare
• Let me know what isn’t working

Synchronous classes

• 1 PM - discussion of example paper
• ~1:30 - review of concepts/homework questions
• ~2:30 - Co-working / office hours
• OH by appointment

Coding Challenges

• Exercises from the book
• Jupyter Notebooks
• Suggested approach:
  • Try on your own
  • Work with a partner
  • Ask questions on Discord
    • Surround code with three backticks (```)
  • Look up solutions (where available)

Final Project

• Default option
  • Jupyter notebook
  • Methods + result section of paper
• Replication?
• Do what is best for your future goals

Project Milestones

• Final project
  • Really quickly identify a dataset and general plan (Week 1)
  • Project planning doc (Week 2)
  • Project presentation + report (Week 4)

Grades

• Goal is learning
• Two self-assessment reflections

Wiki

• Schedule
• Links to readings
• Slides and videos may be from older versions of the class
  • I will try to stay 2 days ahead

Brightspace

• Readings
• Example Projects

Discord

• Post questions and help each other
• Synchronous meetings
• Office Hours

Anaconda / Jupyter Intro